GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — A bomb threat that transitioned a Cherry Creek Schools school board meeting from in-person to virtual Monday night was deemed to be not credible by an investigation of the Greenwood Village Police Department.
As Greenwood Village Commander Joe Gutgsell confirmed to 9NEWS Tuesday afternoon, a post from a man named Don Laconte on Facebook contained a bomb emoji and asked for directions to the meeting was reported to Safe2Tell, anonymous way for Coloradans to report school threats. But after an interview with Laconte, it was determined the post was not intended as a threat. Laconte has used similar emojis in comments on other pages of conservative critics of the school district, responding to posts about Black Lives Matter, vaccines and remote learning.
Cherry Creek’s decision to move the meeting online was the latest example of a school district extreme measures to respond to an increased number of perceived threats. The move came a week after a similar threat to JeffCo Public Schools, which also closed a meeting down.
In late January, a man was ticketed by Littleton Police for calling in a threat to that district’s superintendent. In response to the district holding a vaccine clinic for students, the caller left a voicemail for Superintendent Brian Ewart.
“I heard you like to inject children with garbage and poison without their parental consent,” the caller said in the voicemail, according to a report from Littleton Police. “I have a syringe full of anthrax to inject into you…You will shake and you will no longer breathe, you will die because you were injected.”
According to the report, Littleton Police went to Byron Clayton’s home and interviewed his mother. She told investigators that Clayton, 48, had very conservative and anti-vax views and followed the QAnon conspiracy theory.
When investigators talked to Clayton at work, he initially denied making the call, but then told them he made the phone call to vent. He was issued a citation for harassment.
“We’ve got this tribal warfare going on where -- everybody’s picking a side,” said John Nicoletti, a police psychologist who analyzes threats.
“The person who made the threat in Jeffco probably feels like he caused public health to change it. Now he feels empowered. And then other people are seeing that.”
Nicoletti said each time a threat is successful, either by stopping a policy or causing chaos for leaders who have to reschedule a meeting, it may inspire more threats.
But he said school safety officers don’t want to take any chances and they shouldn’t.
“There is damage to giving in but there's also damage to not giving in and having what we call a false negative where you think, 'Oh, it's just someone saying that and then something bad happens.' So you've got to live with either direction,” Nicoletti said.